If waiting for R600 has you down, Sapphire has an upcoming alternative. Early this morning the company internally demonstrated its dual-GPU Radeon X1950 Pro board, dubbed The Godfather. The dual-slot GPU uses two 6-pin power connectors but still fits within the standard 9" riser-board dimensions.

Sapphire representatives tell us the performance of the single card is comparable to two Radeon X1950s in Crossfire mode. The card runs on a single x16 PCIe connector. Both dual-link DVI connectors can be utilized at the same time.

Previous Radeon X1950 Pro cards have a GPU core clock of around 575MHz with a memory clock of 700MHz. The clock frequencies for The Godfather were not revealed.

Also visible on the adaptor are the two interfaces needed for AMD Crossfire. We have confirmed that the upcoming adaptor does not need a Crossfire motherboard as well in single-card implementations. However, memos from the company reveal that the card can be put into Crossfire mode with another identical card on a Crossfire motherboard -- the upcoming implementation would be the first capable of Quad-Crossfire.

Like other X-series Radeon cards, The Godfather is also capable of physics processing via Havok or any other middleware capable of interfacing with the Radeon FPU for physics calculations.

Expect to see demonstrations and benchmarks of the card during the upcoming CES 2007. Sapphire claims the card will be available in Q1'07, well ahead of the March 2007 R600 launch. Sapphire recently announced its AGP version of the Radeon X1950 Pro, but the company would not respond if The Godfather would be available in AGP versions.